Writing (in) the Migrant Space: Discursive Nervousness in Contemporary Nigerian Short Stories

Abstract

We live in period of mass migration, much of contempo- w rary Western culture is work of exiles, and displacement has been transformed into one of most potent motifs in postcolonial writing. In words of Salman Rushdie, migrant has come to be the archetypal figure of our age.1At same time, fierce debate has been raging for years now about sharply contrasting artistic and scholarly evaluations of migrancy. Salman Rushdie and Homi Bhabha are in vanguard of group of thinkers who construe conditions of exile as artistically and politically radical, for they destabilize essentialist categories and force individuals to constantly (renegotiate personal, social, and cultural identities.2 Other commentators, most famously Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik,3 have scathingly criticized what they think is celebratory interpretation of migrancy privileging experiences of postcolonial intellectuals, cosmopolitan escapism, and apolitical aestheticism. Tobias Wachinger is exceptionally fierce in his denigration of what he terms 'posing in-between' of postcolonial intellectuals writing (in) migrant space and suggests that artists and thinkers turn away from the cliched terms and programmatic writing that [. . . ] dominated postcolonial discourse throughout last decade of twentieth century.4 Robert Young perfectly summarizes concerns of this group of critics in one sentence: How can migratory identity be celebrated in refugee camps of Qetta, Jalozai, and elsewhere in Pakistan, [. . . ] in West Bank, in former Sangatte camp in France?5However, as my discussion of contemporary Nigerian short stories will show, writing on migration can be more than an apolitical celebration of hybridity that is merely skin deep and mere effect.6 The two short stories under consideration were written by Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri and Segun Afolabi, winner of Caine Prize for African Writing. These two writers are renowned representatives of post-Achebe generations of Nigerian authors, whose members, among others Helon Habila, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zaynab Alkali, Biyi Bandele, and Sola Osofisan, have published, since mid-1980s, ground-breaking works of short fiction which revisit many of classic themes of (West) African and postcolonial literatures while departing from aesthetic preoccupations of their predecessors through radical innovation and experimentation in fields of narrative technique, structure, and language.Ben Okri and Segun Afolabi engage with theme of migration on several levels. First, both authors were born in Nigeria and have relocated to metropolis. Second, main characters depicted in their stories, in Okri's A Hidden History and Afolabi' s Moses, have similarly crossed borders into UK but, quite in contrast to writers, are condemned to what Bhabha calls a life lived on cultural margins of modern society.7 Third, major thematic preoccupation in stories is negotiation between protagonists' position of liminality and social, political, and cultural mainstream.This essay will argue that these texts create moments of radical textual indeterminacy:8 rhetorical and symbolic ambiguity, structural discontinuity, and outright gaps in narratives repeatedly deflate readers' expectations and complicate interpretation. The resulting discursive nervousness is heightened by very form of short story - genre that has often been conceived of as 'recalcitrant', 'liminal', or 'difficult'. I would like to show how writing migrant space as short story can thus lead to emergence of Bhabha's Third Space of enunciation10 and challenge structures of authority, received wisdom, and cosmopolitan complacency.Ben Okri's A Hidden History is set in contemporary Western city which is supposedly London even though it is never explicitly named. Immigrants from West Africa populate street on outskirts of city. …